"Rafael Cruz was not a co-conspirator with Lee Harvey Oswald in the murder of John F. Kennedy. Period."

Or…

"Heidi Cruz is not inferior in the looks department to my Balkan supermodel wife. Period."

Or, perhaps…

"There are no beans to spill on Honest Ted Cruz. Period."

Or...

"Ted Cruz tells the truth at all times and on all subjects. He is not Lyin' Ted. Period."

In a year in which the entire Republican Party demonstrated time after time that it has the collective backbone of pond algae and all the intellectual integrity of a flesh-eating virus, on Friday, we may well have reached Peak Sellout. Bring it to us, CNN.

"After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump," Cruz wrote in a Facebook post. "A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment. And if you don't want to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, I encourage you to vote for him."

Sure, he slandered my father and he mocked my wife, but I now will support him for president of the United States.

Not since 2008, when John McCain sucked up to the same forces that had soaked his young daughter in calumny four years earlier, have we seen such an abject spasm of hilarious self-abnegation as we saw from Tailgunner Ted Cruz, fearless fighter for the Constitution, dauntless soldier of the living Christ, and marshmallow-spined careerist. There hasn't been much to laugh about in this godforsaken campaign, but I'm rolling on the floor over this one. What an absolute coward. What a comic fraction of a statesman. What a pocket-sized imitation of a United States Senator.

It is said that Cruz was persuaded to foul his reputation by Mike Pence and obvious anagram Reince Priebus. (He also is said to have been charmed by Trump's suggestion that Mike Lee, the konztitooshunal skolar from Utah, would make a good Supreme Court justice. Oy.) I'd like to believe that it took more than the legendary persuasive power of the governor of Indiana and the emptiest suit in American politics to make someone make nicey-nice with a vulgar talking yam who tried to make that person's father an accessory-before-the-fact in the assassination of a president.

Now we know who the Tailgunner is. We're just haggling about the price. Which is not very much at all.

Remember this?

"I'm not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my family. That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi that I'm going to nonetheless come as a servile puppy dog and say, 'Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father.'"

Sit, Ted. Beg. Now roll over. Who's a good servile puppy dog?

And, yes, you may have another.

The video of the killing of Keith Scott that was released by his family on Friday is utterly heartbreaking and it leaves the authorities in that city with no plausible excuse for withholding whatever dashcam video remains unreleased. The video provided by his family raises far more questions that it answers, and one of the questions is whether or not somebody provided a drop piece during one of the blank spots in the video. There is no reason for ambiguity now. Public safety demands that rumors and speculation not be allowed to run wild.

There remains no reason for Scott to have been stopped at all. He was not the person for whom the police were looking. If he had a firearm, the state's open carry law gave him the perfect right to do so. The initial escalation of events seems to lie with the police who, at least according to the family video, arrive with overwhelming force that does not seem appropriate to the situation at the time. His wife is shouting that Scott has a traumatic brain injury. He is surrounded. He's not going anywhere. He has not yet committed a crime.

Why not back off and let the situation cool? The Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force is fine if you're fighting a war in the desert, but it's not appropriate for an urban police force in a residential neighborhood. It is no great insight in this case to wonder whether or not something has gone badly wrong in how we train police.

And, of course, this is not something that happens twice in a week, in two different cities, to white citizens. Hell, it didn't even happen to Ahmad Rahami, who tried to blow people up in New York and, when run to ground, tried to shoot it out with police.

Oh, and speaking of The Enemy In Our Midst, did you know that a good ol' American boy was caught up trying to do a little terrorism of his own? From The Washington Post:

Federal authorities launched an undercover operation last month to monitor 50-year-old Cary Lee Ogborn, who they believed accessed an underground marketplace for illegal goods and tried to "transport explosives for the purpose of injury or destruction of property," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas… Federal prosecutors allege that starting in late August, online user "boatmanstv" went into an underground marketplace called AlphaBay, which uses onion routing, or TOR, to conceal users' IP addresses, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court. The user, who authorities believe was Ogborn, began communicating with an undercover FBI agent he apparently thought was an online explosives dealer. The user wrote that he wanted to buy a detonator to blow up a five-gallon drum of gasoline. "Dont need big explosion," he wrote Aug. 27, according to court records, "just need to make sure building 20 ft x 40 ft made of wood burns to the ground." That same day, he explained that he was planning to put explosives under a structure being used as someone's apartment and detonate it from a distance. "The building like shed or storage, so yes like a house of wood," he wrote, according to court records. "I guess I could use 1/4 stick TNT and gas to make sure it burns, or diesel fuel? I may use pressure sprayer to wet down the outside of the building right before I trigger it to help the burn."

It's like going to Home Depot with crazy people!

From the Musical, Mystical Magical Land Of Oz: from Kansas City, Official Blog Music Archivist Bill Osment points out that September 23rd is one fine day for musical birthdays:

John Coltrane (1926).

Ray Charles (1930).

Roy Buchanan (1939).

Bruce Springsteen (1949).

And speaking of music, the Oz reminded me of this last week but I forgot to include it. A record producer named Lewis Merenstein passed away at the age of 81. Merenstein was a respected producer with a client list that eventually would run from Gladys Knight to Charlie Daniels, but, one day, he went to a small recording studio in Boston to hear some new music from an eccentric singer-songwriter from Belfast. And this is what resulted.

There simply is no other record like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. I have to have listened to this record almost a thousand times and it still sounds like it came from some other place and some other time. I've never been in the slipstream between the viaduct and someone's dreams, but I know exactly what it feels like to be there. It was Lewis Merenstein's masterpiece, too.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's some footage of the Sidney Street Siege in 1911. Some Latvian revolutionaries went on a crime spree in London and then found themselves besieged by every police force in London. The young Home Secretary Winston Churchill even showed up, for which he was criticized and, obviously, the controversy ended his political career.

This week, we received confirmation that Maureen Dowd and Sean Hannity will be going to hell, at least according to Papa Francesco, as brought to us by Reuters. He's working as slot man on God's city desk these days.

Journalism based on gossip or rumors is a form of "terrorism" and media that stereotype entire populations or foment fear of migrants are acting destructively, Pope Francis said on Thursday. Francis, who made his comments in an address to leaders of Italy's national journalists' guild, said reporters had to go the extra mile to seek the truth, particularly in an age of round-the-clock news coverage. Spreading rumors is an example of "terrorism, of how you can kill a person with your tongue", he said. "This is even more true for journalists because their voice can reach everyone and this is a very powerful weapon." Francis, who has often strongly defended the rights of refugees and migrants, said journalism should not be used as a "weapon of destruction against persons and even entire peoples". "Neither should it foment fear before events like forced migration from war or from hunger," he added.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news, isn't it, Science Daily?

Called Triopticus primus -- meaning the "First of Three Eyes" because the large natural pit in the top of its head lends the appearance of an "extra"eye -- Triopticus bears an extremely thickened skull roof, just like the very distantly related pachycephalosaur dinosaurs that lived more than 100 million years later. And even more unexpected, many of the other extinct animals found with Triopticus resemble later dinosaurs as well. "Triopticus is an extraordinary example of evolutionary convergence between the relatives of dinosaurs and crocodylians and later dinosaurs that is much more common than anyone ever expected," Stocker said. "What we thought were unique body shapes in many dinosaurs actually evolved millions of years before in the Triassic Period, about 225 million years ago."

That must have been very confusing for Adam and Eve.

The race for Top Commenter Of The Week was a muddle until Top Commenter George Krausser chimed in with this assessment of the presidential campaign that slogan-checked the unofficial motto of the Bateman-Pierce campaign:

George Krausser The best comparison for this election is the classic Ray Patterson/Homer Simpson Springfield Sanitation Commissioner race. Unfortunately, if the puffy cheeto is elected, the solution will be a lot more complex than moving the country 5 miles down the road!

I'm in Austin this weekend at the Texas Tribune Festival. I will have something about that on Monday, along with some OMIGAWD IT'S DEBATE DAY! Gobshitery. Be well and play nice ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and say goodbye to Madame George.

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